by Holley Trent
“That’s not what he insinuated, Finch,” Joey interrupted.
Of course, she had to look at him then.
Normally, he was buttoned up and slickly dressed as was normal for the vast majority of Athena’s publicity staff, but on casual days, he went as unstructured as he could go. Gray hoodie. Respectable-enough jeans for a man of forty-something. Extremely garish sneakers.
It…somehow worked on him.
“I thought it was a little weird, too, but apparently, that other author she’s mentioned in the same sentence as keeps showing up as a read-alike at all the big vendors. Stacia tends to be pretty laissez-faire about that shit, but this is a special case. She suspects the other author isn’t writing her own shit. She wants to see what we can do to reverse the association between the two of them.”
“What?” Finch didn’t want to think she’d played in part of helping a fraud get their work to market.
Evidently aware of the cause of Finch’s distress, Raleigh gave a dismissive wave. “Yeah, there’s something going on with that. I can’t say for sure and I’m not going to poke the hornets’ nest. The legal department would know the truth. When it blows up, it’ll be on them, not you.”
“The publicity team will have a super fun time digging out the brand from that shit,” Joey mumbled. “Done it before. I’m sure no one has learned their lesson.”
“Of course not,” Raleigh said. “Anyhow, it’ll probably kill that other so-called author’s visibility entirely if she’s not drafting behind Stacia’s success, but I suppose her in-house publicist can figure out how to fix that.”
“Who’s she assigned to?” Finch wasn’t sure she wanted to know, but that person probably deserved a prayer or two for all the ground they were going to have to make up.
“Charlie.” Raleigh’s grin was absolutely predatory. “He inherited Everley’s authors when she left and picked up a few of my problem authors once he cleared his probationary period.”
“Poor kid,” Joey said, studying his nails.
“Yeah, poor, poor kid. Anyhow. Can you fix that?”
Finch nodded on a delay, still trying to process the unusual request. “Yes, I’ll try to edit all the web places where those two names are mentioned together.”
“Super.” Raleigh gave Finch’s desk a percussive rap, then turned toward the door. “You heading out, Joey? Or are you trying to be the last one out the door again?”
Finch held her tongue.
It wasn’t her business.
He’d said his piece on the matter, and she had to agree that she would probably feel similarly if she’d been in his shoes.
She’d never been laid off. For that matter, she’d never had a promotion since arriving at Athena, either. If being stable for the indefinite future meant that she would never get one, she would probably accept that.
“Nah, not trying to be,” Joey said. “Just not going very far until after Christmas. Ma is expecting us all tonight for the traditional pre-holiday meal. We don’t even try to get together on Christmas day anymore.”
“Does Lisa know the plan?”
“Yeah, she’s on the way there now. Got delayed at the Bungalows because of reno stuff.”
Raleigh creased his brow. “What’s she renovating now? Last time we talked to her, she said she was done for a while. Bruce offered her the use of some interest-free money if she needed it, but she told him to ask her again in a year.”
Joey scoffed. “Get this shit. You know she hired some front office staff, right? Keely, for one?”
“Yeah?”
Finch made a small spectacle of organizing and zipping up her laptop case. Generally, people didn’t have conversations in her office. She missed a lot of the good gossip. And of course she wasn’t going to plug her ears about what Lisa was doing. She was obsessed.
You’re pitiful, Finch Alice. Just pitiful.
“Well, last week, Keely had dropped this throwaway comment about wanting to do things for Lisa because she was family.”
“Huh?”
Raleigh was probably the only man on the planet who could make a sneer look attractive.
“Yeah. I think Lisa just chalked it up to Keely being eccentric in that weird way some Southerners are. But it turns out that they are actually related.”
“You’re fucking with me.”
“Nope. Serious as death. I guess Keely’s aunt is big on maintaining the family trees. When she found out Keely was looking at taking a job at the Bungalows and learned that Lisa’s family was from around Rocky Mount, she did a bit of snooping just to see who her people were.”
“Oh God,” Finch murmured.
She may not have had the imagination to be a writer, but she could guess where that story was going.
“Exactly,” Joey said, though whether to Finch or to Raleigh, she couldn’t guess.
They were kind of on speaking terms, it seemed, but discussing work things was a far cry from spilling about their personal lives. Not that Finch had much of one.
Her entire life outside of work was Netflix and avoiding phone calls from her longwinded spinster great aunts in Sligo.
Oh my God, I’m going to be just like them.
Suddenly, she felt a little sick.
Were her nieces going to be aggressively ignoring her chatty text messages in the future?
“They’re something like first cousins four times removed or some shit like that.” Leaning on the edge of Finch’s desk, Joey gave the blond scruff on his chin a contemplative rub. “Apparently, there’s some secret family lore that Lisa’s great-great-great-grandmother, and I’m probably missing a great or else adding one too many, got booted out of the family for getting in the family way, if you catch my drift, with someone she couldn’t legally marry.”
“And that’s where Lisa’s line comes in?”
“Yep. That lady’s sister was Keely’s great-great-whatever.”
“How does Lisa feel about it?”
“She’s thrilled to know about that aspect of her family tree. It’d been a brick wall before. But she’s understandably a bit weirded out by Keely’s insistence that she make amends for ‘Aunt Katie getting cut off.’” He made air quotes, and Finch could imagine those words coming out of Lisa’s mouth, and her flat, resigned delivery of them.
That time, she didn’t bother suppressing her sigh.
If she was going to be ridiculous, there was no use hiding it from the world. She’d probably feel freer once she stopped pretending to be dignified.
“Anyhow, Keely’s dad is going to do some work on the property, and I suppose Lisa will never, ever be able to fire her.”
“Poor Lisa,” Raleigh said. “I see how people stick to her like lint. She just has one of those energies, I guess.”
Finch sighed again.
She was lint.
She supposed that sounded nicer than “ridiculous.”
“Well, you know how she is. She’ll adapt. In time, I’m sure she’ll find a way to make Keely competent. I think Keely is just one of those people who’s naturally chaotic. Structure and lists will get her where she needs to be.”
“If anyone can whip her into shape, it’s Lisa.” Raleigh backed through the open doorway, waving at both. “We’ll get in touch with her soon. I’m sure we’ll want to head out the Bungalows after the holidays. Bruce likes the sound of the piano there. He’s tinkering with a score.”
“Yeah. Sure thing.”
Raleigh vanished.
Awash in confusion, Finch stared at the spot he’d been standing in. Vaguely, she registered that Joey was still leaning on her desk, but she could only manage one big thought nugget at a time. Finch’s brain was probably a little more editorial than most, and sometimes, she couldn’t help but read aggressively between the lines. To her, it sounded like any trip to the Bungalows involving Raleigh wouldn’t only involve Everley, but Bruce as well.
“Why are you making that face?” Joey asked with a laugh.
She should have been
used to that—him laughing at her expense—but doubted she ever would be.
She didn’t like it. It was insult added to injury. He’d already won, and apparently wanted to stand there and taunt her.
Still, she smoothed her expression and concentrated on arranging her laptop bag’s strap over her shoulder just so. “It’s nothing. I just hadn’t realized Raleigh and Everley were so close to Bruce.”
“Of course they are. They live together.”
Finch couldn’t keep pretending to give a shit about her laptop bag after having that bombshell dropped on her desk. “I don’t understand. Why would Bruce want to live with them? He’s richer than everyone in this building combined.”
“You poor, sweet soul,” Joey said with a shake of his head. “This isn’t 1955. Why do you think a man who’s perfectly capable of maintaining his own domicile would choose to crowd into an ancient apartment with a famous pansexual and the woman he was rumored to have dated in the past?”
Finch blinked.
And then blinked again as though that would reboot her hard drive and make her processor run a little faster.
Didn’t help.
Perhaps to Joey, the answer seemed obvious. But Finch felt like she’d been called up to the chalkboard and asked to add three-digit numbers in front of the whole class. She hadn’t immediately gotten the knack of that whole “carry the one if the sum is more than nine” thing in third grade, and she’d stood there in a panic, unable to even start.
But fortunately, in the twenty-something years since then, she’d learned somewhat better communication skills.
“You may need to help me with that math,” she admitted wearily.
“They’re a unit,” Joey said. “A triad. That’s not really public information, and they prefer it to be that way, but apparently, Raleigh thought it was okay for you to know now. You were probably going to put the clues together eventually, anyway.”
“So, they all just…”
“Uh-huh.”
“And Everley…”
“Sure.”
“Oh my goodness.”
Two men?
Finch drew in a gasp any wallflower would be humiliated to have performed.
She did try not to be such a stereotype, but she couldn’t help being what she was.
Apparently, she wasn’t editing enough of the right kinds of books.
I wonder if the romance imprint has openings.
But the more she thought about the arrangement, the more Finch could appreciate how effective it might be.
If Finch were Everley Shannon, she certainly wouldn’t be losing any sleep over having left the company if that was part of what she was moving on to. Living in an arrangement like that, she probably never felt like she was forgotten about.
That was all Finch wanted, really.
Even having barely known Finch, Lisa had treated her like she was unforgettable. Lisa had made Finch believe that being in complete awe of someone wasn’t just a storybook notion. It could happen in real life, too. The problem was that Finch had never positioned herself as the protagonist in any story before. If she wanted to happy, she had to get out from behind the scenes and become her very own Princess Charming.
“Anyhow,” Joey said cheerily. “At the risk of seeming like I’m trying to be the last one out of the office today, where are you headed?”
“Why?”
“Is curiosity a convincing enough explanation?”
“No. It might have been if you’d shown more than a speck of interest in my life in the past.”
He rolled his eyes. “Fine. You expect me to be completely self-serving, and so I won’t deviate from that casting. You see, I have a problem.”
“And?”
“And you’re the problem.”
“I understand that sentiment. I feel similarly about you.”
Joey opened his mouth, closed it, took a long, deep breath in through his nose, and let the air out through his clenched teeth. “Do me a favor and stop being a shrew for fifteen seconds and listen.”
Shrew today, then, Finch thought impassively. I suppose I’ll start being that Princess-Charming thing tomorrow.
“As I was saying, I have a problem, and that problem is that my lady has a habit of collecting projects.” He counted off on his fingers. “Her previously-hapless friend Everley Shannon. Her dog, Margo. The Burnout Bungalows. Keeley.”
“You.”
Joey took another of those breaths.
She didn’t know what it was about him that made her want to talk back.
Perhaps she was just that annoyed by him.
Or perhaps it was comfort.
She didn’t even want to waste brain energy pondering why that possibility came to mind. It was way too farfetched.
“I’ll concede that I’m a piece of work,” he said, “but I’d also propose that you recognize that in me because my affliction is one you share. If you’d like to lob another insult at me, go ahead and get it out of your system now so we can move on with this.”
“I’m done.” Though she wasn’t making any promises about later.
“Great. To be clear, I don’t really like you.”
“Feeling’s mutual.”
“Super. But the issue I have is that my lady is hung up on you a little. I may be an asshole, but I’m an asshole who solves problems.”
Hung up on me?
Finch could have floated—just floated away—at hearing him say that. The delivery of the news could have come across as a threat, but apparently, threats weren’t Joey’s style.
And denying herself good things wasn’t Finch’s style. Not anymore, anyway.
“Since I’m the problem, does that mean you’re solving me?” she asked.
“Sweetheart, I’m not that generous. All I’m saying is that I’m going to help Lisa answer that burning question of what-if? that seems to be swimming in her head right now. I won’t interfere.”
Finch needed a minute to chew on that.
It sounded like he was saying, “Go on and take your best shot,” but it also sounded like a trap. It sounded like he wanted to set her up to fail miserably so he could smile in her face and say, “Are you done now?”
Proceed with caution, Princess.
“I don’t understand the offer,” she confessed. “And if I get anywhere, then what? You’ll make her choose?”
“I’m going to repeat this again in different words because you evidently didn’t hear me the first time. The offer is that you figure out if there’s a thing there, and I won’t interfere. Don’t fuck with what Lisa and I have, and in return, I’ll concede that sometimes relationships are complicated and that they look more like pretzels than donuts. I want Lisa to be happy. That’s the long and short of it. So. I’m inviting you to come with us to my mother’s. We’ll see what shakes out, if that’s what you really want. Though honestly, I suspect it isn’t. So, what do you say?”
There were a lot of things Finch could say, starting with “Go fuck yourself” and ending with “I don’t need your pity,” but the truth was, she did need the generosity.
And she wanted the opening he was offering her because if things worked out, she could be something for someone.
While she would never have expected to find herself in a scenario like the one Joey was proposing, she could be a flexible thinker at times.
Joey didn’t think it would work out because what they were attempting didn’t look like what Everley and Raleigh and Bruce were. Those three were a triad.
But Joey wasn’t attracted to Finch in that way. Although Finch could concede that she’d let Joey and that massive dick of his hate-fuck her into a pile of confetti, she couldn’t see wanting him for anything more than that.
For a fair chance to connect with Lisa, though, she’d try anything.
She’d even stomach Joey.
She extended a hand for him to shake. “I suppose we have an agreement.”
He shook her hand and retreated to the hallway. “
I’ll meet you in the lobby in ten if you’re going.”
Oh, she was going.
She would never forgive herself if she at least didn’t try.
What was the worst that could happen? That she’d fail again?
It seemed a small consideration when stacked against the possibility that it could work.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Jesus Christ, it’s a good thing you’re here,” Jennifer Novak-Banks murmured as she tugged the heavy front door open for Lisa.
Bright Christmas music with a decidedly Slavic flavor boomed from somewhere deep in the brownstone, louder even than the strident screams of children that overlapped each other like lasagna noodles.
Lisa cringed.
She loved those kids. Really, she did. But she’d just gotten rid of a Bungalows-induced migraine.
Jennifer, a blue-eyed blonde with her mother’s transparent skin and her late father’s no-nonsense square build, dropped her hands on her guest’s shoulders and gave Lisa a waking shake. “There’s no turkey, Lisa. No one brought a fucking turkey. Ma’s doing that thing. You know, the thing where she gets all fatalistic and dramatic for no good reason, but maybe it’ll be a good reason soon because no one brought a turkey.”
And apparently, that was what Joey intended for Lisa to marry into—a family that habitually forgot things like turkeys during major holiday celebrations.
“Okay, first of all,” Lisa said, heeling off her boots on the mat and shutting the door on the wind, “whose job was the turkey? And second of all, where’s Joey? I assumed he’d beat me here. I came straight from the Bungalows and I was running behind.”
“Tanya was supposed to bring the turkey, but her goddamned dog got into it when she was defrosting it in the sink,” Jennifer snarled. She immediately fixed her face, though. “Wait. Where’s your dog? You always bring the dog.”
“My uncle swung by the Bungalows and picked her up. He’s driving her down to my mother’s. I love that freaking dog, but I have to be a grownup and let her go. She’s old and needs constant vet attention, and my mother has more time to nurse her.”
“Great.” Jennifer threw up her hands. “Something else for Ma to complain about. She complained about you bringing her even while she was passing scraps to her under the table. God forbid that anyone thinks she cares about something. Now she’s gonna say we can’t do anything the same way twice and that someone should have brought the dog.”
